Page 29 of Peculiar Engagements

“You should go back.” Yves towed Pearl to the open door, where Tony and Peter had left the carriage to peer inside. Tony looked Yves up and down as though searching him for burns, and Yves glared at him. “What were you doing, sending Pearl in there?”

“There were too many nobles,” Tony said, “and they were mostly dominants. Pearl could sneak through easier than us.”

“You know how she gets in a crowd of people,” Yves said, glad to have a place to channel the unease and horror of the past day.

“I’m right here,” Pearl said. “Thanks ever so much.”

“Sorry, Pearl, but you were sweating in there. Do you two do this often? Send her in to slip past a group of dominants like a lamb in a pit of wolves?”

“You’re calling your suitors wolves?” Pearl asked.

“Hush while I’m defending you,” Yves said, and Pearl snorted.

“You’ve been gone for half her life,” Tony said. “Why do you suddenly care what any of us do now?”

“Because I still love you, you shit.”

“Funny way of showing it, running off to the city and leaving us alone with Ma,” Tony said.

Yves opened his mouth. He wanted to ask,why do I have to be the one who has to stay? Why am I responsible?Since he’d first learned that Tony and Peter wouldn’t eat on time if he wasn’t the one making breakfast, all he’d wanted was a chance to live the life he’d craved. Now he was being blamed for it, while the House of Silver was a ghastly vision of soot and charred wood, and a poor, tortured boy had been killed in the cells.

Maybe hewasselfish. It was why he acted like a brat half the time. Hadn’t he earned a little pampering, after everything?

He glanced back through the door, where Charon was standing with Laurent.

Couldn’t things just be simple?

“We’ll tell Ma you’re safe, Darr,” Peter said, putting a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “He didn’t mean it. We’re a little on edge right now, thinking you were hurt and all.”

“We do love you,” Pearl said.

“I know,” Yves sighed. “I know.”

“You’re still doing the marriage contest after all this?” Peter asked. “Ma will want to know. She brought this man all the way from the country to see you.”

Yves bit his cheek. “Yes. I’m still doing it.”

Tony shook his head in silent disapproval and turned for the carriage. Peter mouthed another apology as he followed, and Pearl paused, clasping her hands together.

“What’s the next contest?” she asked. “Cousin Harriet might want to know.”

At least Harriet was there. She might not have been one of the Cooper siblings, but she was a better peacekeeper than Yves. “It’s a hedge maze. There’ll be food, if you want to come.”

“Oh, I can’t,” Pearl said. “That sounds busier than a summer festival.” She looked down at her feet. “I’m getting better, though.”

“I know you are, Pearl.”

Yves watched his siblings climb into their cart. Tony was right; Yveshadleft them. Still, it seemed like no matter how much time passed, they were always the same. Tony was abrasive and blunt as their mother. Pearl was a shadow. And Peter was always trying to be the big man, desperate to fill Yves’ shoes as the one to hold everything together.

Yves turned back to the House of Onyx. Laurent had retreated to his office, and Charon sat next to the breakfast tray, his face in shadow.

“I don’t really feel like eating,” Yves said. “Do you?”

“You should have something,” Charon said, without looking up.

Yves sat down on the couch next to him. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the scratching of a pen in Laurent’s office.

“Someone killed him,” Yves said at last. “And I’m going to bicker with my family, arrange a hedge maze party, and flirt with rich men like it never happened.”

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